The Reluctant Clergyman (1835-1859)
Samuel Butler was born on December 4th, 1835 in the village of Langar, Nottinghamshire to Reverend Thomas Butler and his wife Harriet. As the grandson and son of prominent Anglican clergymen, Butler was expected to follow in their spiritual footsteps. However, Butler would grow disillusioned with Victorian religious conventions and forge his own unorthodox path in life.
Butler had a difficult relationship with his parents, later describing his father as "an ill-tempered and unsympathetic man" and his pious mother as "a regular devil who made me become an agnostic." After being educated at home due to poor health, Butler attended Shrewsbury School where he first rebelled against religious dogma.
Despite his doubts, Butler studied Classics at St. John‘s College, Cambridge at his father‘s insistence. He graduated in 1858 and half-heartedly began theological training to become an Anglican minister. During this time Butler increasingly questioned doctrines like infant baptism and eternal punishment. His defiance led to arguments with his father that resulted in Butler abandoning his religious career in 1859.
An Exile Down Under (1859-1864)
Craving escape from his overbearing parents, Butler sailed from England to New Zealand in 1859 determined to start afresh. He lived deep in the Canterbury wilderness running a sheep station, an experience that later inspired his novel Erewhon. During this period of exile, Butler read Charles Darwin‘s On the Origin of Species which reinforced his drifting from Christianity by suggesting all life evolved slowly without divine intervention.
While in New Zealand in 1863, Butler wrote a series of satirical letters to The Press newspaper under the pseudonym Cellarius. These letters formed the basis for Erewhon and included the provocative essay "Darwin Among the Machines" warning that machines were evolving so rapidly they may one day overtake mankind. This cemented Butler‘s early reputation as an unorthodox thinker ruffling feathers on multiple fronts.
Erewhon and Beyond (1864-1884)
When Butler returned to England in 1864, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to his blossoming literary career. Drawing on his New Zealand experiences, he published the utopian satire Erewhon anonymously in 1872. The novel depicted a fictional world where machines have been abolished for fear they might evolve minds of their own. Through humor and inversion, Erewhon parodied everything from university education to anthropologists to Victorian moral values.
Over the next decade Butler released other works like Evolution, Old and New (1879) where he questioned some aspects of Darwin‘s theory while praising the contributions of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, another evolutionary thinker. This displayed Butler‘s tendency to admire and criticize leading Victorian minds simultaneously.
During the 1870s and 80s Butler mingled in London‘s literary circles befriending figures like Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace, but always retained his reputation as an amusing contrarian within the scientific establishment.
The Way of All Flesh – Butler‘s Literary Legacy (1873-1902)
Butler‘s most famous and autobiographical work is the novel The Way of All Flesh, written between 1873 and 1884. He struggled finding publishers due to its scathing portrayal of Victorian family life and religious hypocrisy. The central character Ernest Pontifex faces an oppressive, loveless upbringing by a pastor father. Butler reflected his own troubled relationship with his parents and ministry through Ernest.
The novel satirizes how pious social conventions in 19th century Britain often concealed cruelty and joylessness. Like Ernest, Butler felt strangled by expectations to follow his father and grandfather into the clergy. Through his writing, Butler exposes shadows behind the glowing image of Anglican vicar families populating English villages.
The Way of All Flesh was so controversial, Butler ordered it be posthumously published to avoid backlash. Tragically, he would never see its eventual widespread acclaim when it appeared in 1903, a year after his death from cancer at age 66.
This intensely personal novel encapsulating criticism of religion, family dysfunction and a repressive society is now considered one of the greatest English satires ever written. It sealed Butler‘s legacy as one of Victorian England‘s most subversive novelists.
The Bachelor and his Bequest (1866-1902)
Butler never married or had children. Though clear evidence is lacking, it is widely believed he was a closeted homosexual which likely reinforced his position as an outsider in England‘s mainstream society. Butler formed close bonds with men his entire life, like his New Zealand friend Charles Pauli who later died by suicide.
In London during his 40s and 50s, Butler had special relationships with younger men such as 22-year old Henry Festing Jones who assisted him with research and accompanied him on European vacations. Whether sexual or not, these attachments followed a consistent pattern that suggest Butler‘s orientation was a key reason he shunned marriage.
Having inherited money from his family, Butler financially supported friends like Jones and Pauli when alive and bequeathed his entire estate to Jones who then shepherded The Way of All Flesh into print a year after Butler died from cancer in 1902. This deathbed gift allowing Butler‘s satirical master work to reach the public was one final defiant act in a remarkable life defined by defiance of convention.
Evolutionary Perspectives – Praise and Criticism for Charles Darwin
Butler had a nuanced view on Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory that mixed immense praise with occasional criticism. Reading On The Origin of Species shortly after arriving in New Zealand in 1859 heavily impacted the young Butler. He immediately embraced natural selection‘s implications that life incrementally diversified without God‘s hand driving change. This fit Butler‘s growing doubts about Christianity during his late 20s.
However, while admiring Darwin, Butler believed the naturalist downplayed earlier insights on evolution developed by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, unfairly hogging credit. Butler explored this in Evolution Old and New (1879) which analyzes similarities between Erasmus‘ writing and his famous grandson‘s work, suggesting Charles drew inspiration from his ancestor but failed to acknowledge this assistance.
Despite issues with Darwin‘s ego, Butler remained profoundly influenced by evolutionary thinking. His fascination with machines rising to compete with humans in "Darwin Among the Machines" reflects his belief that inorganic entities were also locked in a struggle for supremacy echoing natural selection among organic life forms. Just as animals and plants fight to multiply, Butler suggested future wars might pit humans against mechanical rivals we created, foreshadowing modern worries about hostile artificial intelligence.
So while lauding Darwin for scientifically demonstrating life‘s never-ending change, Butler used evolution partly as a jumping off point to develop his own fantastically speculative ideas about humans, machines and possible widely divergent futures. Echoing Darwin‘s willingness to follow evidence wherever it led, Butler let his imagination wander freely into unconventional territory without worrying whether his conclusions appeared sensible to contemporaries.
Victorian Rebel and Modern Visionary
Living during the morally and religiously stringent Victorian Era, Butler chafed against social conventions of this period in ways that occasionally seem strikingly modern over a century later. Through satirical novels like Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh, Butler slyly condemned cultural norms surrounding religion, colonialism, family relations and technology.
His life foreshadowed modern worries about artificial intelligence rebelling against people. "Darwin Among the Machines" and Erewhon envision mechanized entities one day controlling humanity, anticipating present debates like Elon Musk warning advanced AI could dominate humans unless we carefully regulate its growth.
Likewise, Butler dared to openly question core church doctrines during the 1860s when religious doubt carried heavy stigma. His writings disputed cornerstone Anglican beliefs including the historical accuracy of Biblical miracles and the existence of an afterlife where sinners suffered eternal torment, foretelling today‘s growing comfort questioning whether basic Christian supernatural claims comport with science.
And Butler presented one of English literature‘s first relatively sympathetic homosexual characters through Ernest Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh. Ernest‘s close male friendships mirror Butler‘s own suspected orientation which likewise clashed against 19th century cultural mores. This frankness was ahead of its era.
Both his visionary imagination and defiance of prevailing pieties established Butler as a man well ahead of his Victorian times. This helps explain his struggle finding publishers for works like The Way of All Flesh ridiculing institutions still commanding enormous deference in late 1800s Britain.
Now Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler both retain immense name recognition over a century following their deaths. But in notable ways among the two, Butler‘s brazen challenges to traditional mores can resonate more strongly with today‘s socially libertarian mindsets. Perhaps by breaking convention so sharply, Butler was both a quintessential Victorian and far ahead of his generation in many regards.
